An Inhumane Trade: human trafficking

The battle is being fought across the border and in our backyard

One of the more infamous streets for prostitution is Sullivan Street near the center of Mexico City where police constantly drive quickly past the cars moving slowly along the sidewalk checking out the young girls waiting for business.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

One of the more infamous streets for prostitution is Sullivan Street near the center of Mexico City where police constantly drive quickly past the cars moving slowly along the sidewalk checking out the young girls waiting for business.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

San Diego County plays a significant role in human trafficking because it has the busiest land port in the world, miles of border territory, an international airport and easy access to interstate highways. Those factors make it one of the top 10 U.S. cities for child pornography and trafficking, said Joe Garcia, special agent in charge of Department of Homeland Security investigations in San Diego.

The State Department estimates that 15,000 to 18,000 foreign trafficking victims are brought to the U.S. each year. Many of them come from Mexico or cross through Mexico into America from distant countries.

On the surface, Tenancingo is a charming town — despite the lurkers who follow and question newcomers.

The village plaza is large. Its trees are trimmed into the shapes of animals, tea pots and blooming flowers. An old man with a weathered face and a cowboy hat shines shoes near a gazebo in the municipal park. His view across the street encompasses the tall spires of the village’s yellow Catholic church building.

Food carts line the square, and a nearby school provides the cacophony of sounds only children at recess would make. Beyond the school, a warehouse doubles as a gym where boxing and karate are offered to kids.

Then there are the teens and young women who arrive in Tlaxcala in the middle of the night from other parts of Mexico. They live behind the thick walls and barbed wire of the village’s largest and most ornate houses.

These structures resemble tiered wedding cakes with single-room cupolas, or turrets, perched atop their steep, shiny, glazed roof tiles. The little rooms have steepled roofs and glass panes but no windows because, it is whispered, if a victim were to escape, she could not climb down and run away.

The homes stand out with facades painted the colors of navel oranges, fresh sod, sunflowers and salmon. Finials in the shape of gargoyles and angels emphasize the apexes of some houses.

Neighboring towns of Tlaxcala have a similar landscape. From this central Mexican state, men fan out across the republic to woo girls with romance and dreams of marriage, then use brainwashing and violence to press them into prostitution.

One in five young boys there say they want to be padrotes, or pimps, according to a local university’s study. They are taught the ways of a Romeo pimp by brothers, cousins, fathers and grandfathers.

“They can have houses, cars and women, and they see that it is not punished,” said Emilio Munoz Berruecos, director of Centro Frey Julian Garces, a center that educates the community about trafficking and lobbies government officials to take action.

Spreading the blame

Researchers said sex trafficking in Tenancingo dates back to the 1960s, when a laborer witnessed it in Mexico City and returned home to start his own illicit business.

“Right now it’s the third generation, the sons and grandsons of the original traffickers,” Berruecos said. “And in all of those years, we did not see any people working on this issue.”